Subtitles and Transcript

Stephen Cave

0:11
I have a question:Who here remembers when they first realizedthey were going to die?

0:20
I do. I was a young boy,and my grandfather had just died,and I remember a few days later lying in bed at nighttrying to make sense of what had happened.What did it mean that he was dead?Where had he gone?It was like a hole in reality had opened upand swallowed him.But then the really shocking
question occurred to me:If he could die, could it happen to me too?Could that hole in reality open up and swallow me?Would it open up beneath my bedand swallow me as I slept?Well, at some point, all children
become aware of death.It can happen in different ways, of course,and usually comes in stages.Our idea of death develops as we grow older.And if you reach back into the dark cornersof your memory,you might remember something like what I feltwhen my grandfather died and when I realizedit could happen to me too,that sense that behind all of thisthe void is waiting.

1:27
And this development in childhoodreflects the development of our species.Just as there was a point in your developmentas a child when your sense of self and of timebecame sophisticated enoughfor you to realize you were mortal,so at some point in the evolution of our species,some early human's sense of self and of timebecame sophisticated enoughfor them to become the first human to realize,"I'm going to die."This is, if you like, our curse.It's the price we pay for being so damn clever.We have to live in the knowledgethat the worst thing that can possibly happenone day surely will,the end of all our projects,our hopes, our dreams, of our individual world.We each live in the shadow of a personalapocalypse.

2:24
And that's frightening. It's terrifying.And so we look for a way out.And in my case, as I was about five years old,this meant asking my mum.Now when I first started askingwhat happens when we die,the grown-ups around me at the timeanswered with a typical English mix of awkwardnessand half-hearted Christianity,and the phrase I heard most oftenwas that granddad was now"up there looking down on us,"and if I should die too, which
wouldn't happen of course,then I too would go up there,which made death sound a lot likean existential elevator.Now this didn't sound very plausible.I used to watch a children's
news program at the time,and this was the era of space exploration.There were always rockets going up into the sky,up into space, going up there.But none of the astronauts when they came backever mentioned having met my granddador any other dead people.But I was scared,and the idea of taking the existential elevatorto see my granddadsounded a lot better than being swallowedby the void while I slept.And so I believed it anyway,even though it didn't make much sense.

3:40
And this thought process that I went throughas a child, and have been through many times since,including as a grown-up,is a product of what psychologists calla bias.Now a bias is a way in which we systematicallyget things wrong,ways in which we miscalculate, misjudge,distort reality, or see what we want to see,and the bias I'm talking aboutworks like this:Confront someone with the factthat they are going to dieand they will believe just about any storythat tells them it isn't trueand they can, instead, live forever,even if it means taking the existential elevator.Now we can see this as the biggest bias of all.It has been demonstrated in over 400empirical studies.Now these studies are ingenious, but they're simple.They work like this.You take two groups of peoplewho are similar in all relevant respects,and you remind one group that they're going to diebut not the other, then you compare their behavior.So you're observing how it biases behaviorwhen people become aware of their mortality.And every time, you get the same result:People who are made aware of their mortalityare more willing to believe storiesthat tell them they can escape deathand live forever.So here's an example: One recent studytook two groups of agnostics,that is people who are undecidedin their religious beliefs.Now, one group was asked to think about being dead.The other group was asked to think aboutbeing lonely.They were then asked again
about their religious beliefs.Those who had been asked
to think about being deadwere afterwards twice as likely to express faithin God and Jesus.Twice as likely.Even though the before they
were all equally agnostic.But put the fear of death in them,and they run to Jesus.

5:40
Now, this shows that reminding people of deathbiases them to believe, regardless of the evidence,and it works not just for religion,but for any kind of belief systemthat promises immortality in some form,whether it's becoming famousor having childrenor even nationalism,which promises you can live
on as part of a greater whole.This is a bias that has shapedthe course of human history.

6:08
Now, the theory behind this biasin the over 400 studiesis called terror management theory,and the idea is simple. It's just this.We develop our worldviews,that is, the stories we tell ourselvesabout the world and our place in it,in order to help us managethe terror of death.And these immortality storieshave thousands of different manifestations,but I believe that behind the apparent diversitythere are actually just four basic formsthat these immortality stories can take.And we can see them repeating themselvesthroughout history, just with slight variationsto reflect the vocabulary of the day.Now I'm going to briefly introduce these fourbasic forms of immortality story,and I want to try to give you some senseof the way in which they're retold by each cultureor generationusing the vocabulary of their day.

7:04
Now, the first story is the simplest.We want to avoid death,and the dream of doing that in this bodyin this world foreveris the first and simplest kind of immortality story,and it might at first sound implausible,but actually, almost every culture in human historyhas had some myth or legendof an elixir of life or a fountain of youthor something that promises to keep us goingforever.Ancient Egypt had such myths,ancient Babylon, ancient India.Throughout European history, we find them
in the work of the alchemists,and of course we still believe this today,only we tell this story using the vocabularyof science.So 100 years ago,hormones had just been discovered,and people hoped that hormone treatmentswere going to cure aging and disease,and now instead we set our hopes on stem cells,genetic engineering, and nanotechnology.But the idea that science can cure deathis just one more chapter in the storyof the magical elixir,a story that is as old as civilization.But betting everything on the idea of finding the elixirand staying alive foreveris a risky strategy.When we look back through historyat all those who have sought an elixir in the past,the one thing they now have in commonis that they're all dead.

8:28
So we need a backup plan,
and exactly this kind of plan Bis what the second kind of immortality story offers,and that's resurrection.And it stays with the idea that I am this body,I am this physical organism.It accepts that I'm going to have to diebut says, despite that,I can rise up and I can live again.In other words, I can do what Jesus did.Jesus died, he was three days in the [tomb],and then he rose up and lived again.And the idea that we can all be
resurrected to live againis orthodox believe, not just for Christiansbut also Jews and Muslims.But our desire to believe this storyis so deeply embeddedthat we are reinventing it againfor the scientific age,for example, with the idea of cryonics.That's the idea that when you die,you can have yourself frozen,and then, at some point when technologyhas advanced enough,you can be thawed out and repaired and revivedand so resurrected.And so some people believe an omnipotent godwill resurrect them to live again,and other people believe an
omnipotent scientist will do it.

9:34
But for others, the whole idea of resurrection,of climbing out of the grave,it's just too much like a bad zombie movie.They find the body too messy, too unreliableto guarantee eternal life,and so they set their hopes on the third,more spiritual immortality story,the idea that we can leave our body behindand live on as a soul.Now, the majority of people on Earthbelieve they have a soul,and the idea is central to many religions.But even though, in its current form,in its traditional form,the idea of the soul is still hugely popular,nonetheless we are againreinventing it for the digital age,for example with the ideathat you can leave your body behindby uploading your mind, your essence,the real you, onto a computer,and so live on as an avatar in the ether.

10:24
But of course there are skeptics who sayif we look at the evidence of science,particularly neuroscience,it suggests that your mind,your essence, the real you,is very much dependent on a particular partof your body, that is, your brain.And such skeptics can find comfortin the fourth kind of immortality story,and that is legacy,the idea that you can live onthrough the echo you leave in the world,like the great Greek warrior Achilles,who sacrificed his life fighting at Troyso that he might win immortal fame.And the pursuit of fame is as widespreadand popular now as it ever was,and in our digital age,it's even easier to achieve.You don't need to be a great warrior like Achillesor a great king or hero.All you need is an Internet connection
and a funny cat. (Laughter)But some people prefer to leave a more tangible,biological legacy -- children, for example.Or they like, they hope, to live onas part of some greater whole,a nation or a family or a tribe,their gene pool.But again, there are skepticswho doubt whether legacyreally is immortality.Woody Allen, for example, who said,"I don't want to live on in
the hearts of my countrymen.I want to live on in my apartment."

11:39
So those are the fourbasic kinds of immortality stories,and I've tried to give just some senseof how they're retold by each generationwith just slight variationsto fit the fashions of the day.And the fact that they recur in this way,in such a similar form but
in such different belief systems,suggests, I think,that we should be skeptical of the truthof any particular version of these stories.The fact that some people believean omnipotent god will resurrect them to live againand others believe an omnipotent scientist will do itsuggests that neither are really believing thison the strength of the evidence.Rather, we believe these storiesbecause we are biased to believe them,and we are biased to believe thembecause we are so afraid of death.

12:30
So the question is,are we doomed to lead the one life we havein a way that is shaped by fear and denial,or can we overcome this bias?Well the Greek philosopher Epicurusthought we could.He argued that the fear of death is natural,but it is not rational."Death," he said, "is nothing to us,because when we are here, death is not,and when death is here, we are gone."Now this is often quoted, but it's difficultto really grasp, to really internalize,because exactly this idea of being goneis so difficult to imagine.So 2,000 years later, another philosopher,Ludwig Wittgenstein, put it like this:"Death is not an event in life:We do not live to experience death.And so," he added,"in this sense, life has no end."

13:26
So it was natural for me as a childto fear being swallowed by the void,but it wasn't rational,because being swallowed by the voidis not something that any of uswill ever live to experience.

13:41
Now, overcoming this bias is not easy becausethe fear of death is so deeply embedded in us,yet when we see that the fear itself is not rational,and when we bring out into the openthe ways in which it can unconsciously bias us,then we can at least startto try to minimize the influence it hason our lives.

14:02
Now, I find it helps to see lifeas being like a book:Just as a book is bounded by its covers,by beginning and end,so our lives are bounded by birth and death,and even though a book is
limited by beginning and end,it can encompass distant landscapes,exotic figures, fantastic adventures.And even though a book is
limited by beginning and end,the characters within itknow no horizons.They only know the moments
that make up their story,even when the book is closed.And so the characters of a bookare not afraid of reaching the last page.Long John Silver is not afraid of youfinishing your copy of "Treasure Island."And so it should be with us.Imagine the book of your life,its covers, its beginning and end,
and your birth and your death.You can only know the moments in between,the moments that make up your life.It makes no sense for you to fearwhat is outside of those covers,whether before your birthor after your death.And you needn't worry how long the book is,or whether it's a comic strip or an epic.The only thing that mattersis that you make it a good story.